Batt Insulation Hatch

[Spiderguy]

Ah, but the small details make the difference in a “so-so” drawing and a drawing that looks like a work of art. When drawing details that are at 3” = 1’-0”, poor batt insulation can make a detail look like a 3-year-old drew it. At small scales the line type works great due to the edges being hid in the line thickness, not so at the size I draw in. And yes, those of us who take pleasure in our work do care what our drawings look like, even when we were board drafting, that is why I am even more particular about how my AutoCAD details should look - because it can become much faster than when we were using pencil/ pen and paper. Our details should appear better than those days, we should be more meticulous, and do a better job - using the better tools and creating useful tools as we go.

It is amazing that those of you who will take the time to ridicule this post for something you think is not worth your time to bother with. Why not just move on and let those of us who find tis post useful and worth our time to use it how we see fit.

[ReMark]

Be my guest.

 

Next time you talk with a client ask them what they think about the batt insulation. Tell us what their response was.

 

My intent was not to ridicule your work. Attention to detail is a positive trait.

[Spiderguy]

Put the 2 beside each other - see which one you would go with. Now that it is made into a tool - it works faster than the line type. So, argument that it is a time waster is gone and it is in fact cheaper to use what's the problem? Your argument falls. Sure there was some time involved in getting it set up, however, this was done in a time of no production work, and now who ever wants it can have it with no time involved so where does it impact the client in a negative way?

 

There is an old saying - works great - "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all."

[martinoxx]

I have found one that works, it just doesn't look as good as the one I am trying to create, you can tell it is drawn from lines, and it is not symetrical like the one I have shown above. outside of that it works close to what I want. I have included the file in this reply of the one I found. Once you download it change it from .txt to .pat.

 

Once you are ready to try it in AutoCAD, you type in the scale factor (which will be the width of the area to fill - 3.5 for a 2x4 stud).

 

Thanks,

 

Matt Hamby

 

Many thx for this hatch pattern...it looks very good...much better than batting line

[Spiderguy]

thanks again to HUGHA!

[marc067]

Matt, dont sweat too much on some posts. Perhaps you are a perfectionist, but it is not a fault at all, and you are very generous of your work. There is fields where the esthetics of drawing isn't relevant, but architecture folks are usually not like that. There is a huge value in beautiful drawings when it comes to graphic comunication.

 

We are very grateful.

Marc

[Spiderguy]

Thanks!

I hope you enjoy!

I work for an Engineering Firm in Greensboro, NC, we hold the esthetics of our drawings very high, we try to meet our own self imposed standards - and jobs are randomly audited to verify look, text, scaling, layer use, blocks used, hatching etc... are consistent with those standards. These are all important to send out a quality product as well as to allow many different CAD Tech’s to work on one job and it have a consistent look.

 

Thanks again!

 

Matt

[BIGAL]

My five cents worth went down a different track startpt endpt width draw a pline that is batting shape plus lots of others once you work out how to draw a pline with curves. also zig zag etc. Nice thing is you can trim etc Only disadvantage is not available for curves but could be solved mathmatically was not worth effort at time.

[Spiderguy]

interesting, did you draw circles then tangent lins and convert them to plines, or is there a way to draw a pline segment as an arc - different than the spline command?

[SLW210]

MPEDIT should turn your arcs into PLINES.

[Spiderguy]

OK, that is basically the same comand as PEDIT, except it uses the option for multiple selection without having to make that selection, nice to know! I will edit my alias' to use that command in leau of the PEDIT.

 

Now, my understanding of what he said was that he could draw circles (arcs) while in the PLINE command - while drawing straight lines - not drwing the separate entities then converting them to plines, I would like to learn how to do this, it sounds fascinating. Please explain your process - I could see other uses for it!

 

Thanks,

 

Matt Hamby

Edited April 13, 2011 by Spiderguy

[SLW210]

The way I would do that would be to use the Polygon command and select 1024 for number of sides, this will give you a curve of many straight lines. You could also do this just drawing many very short plines around an arc/circle (use Polar Array to make this quicker.

 

MPEDIT gives the option of a Fuzz Distance while joining, that way the lines do not have to touch end point to end point.

[Spiderguy]

pedit and mpedit are the same command - with the exception the mpedit automatically selects multiple items, where as in pedit the "m" has to be entered before you start selecting. also, arcs can be turned into plines without drawing the multiple segments, however, the only problem with that is sometimes thos joints can look funky due to how AutoCAD handles the intersections of sharp angles

 

Again, Thanks for the tips!

[BIGAL]

To matthamby you draw plines from first princples as one continous pline, you can draw a line then continue the pline with an arc then draw a line and so forth

 

cut this out of master lisp so not sure if it will work but shows how to do it

 

(setq insul_ht (getint "\nEnter Insulation ht mm :<90> "))
(if (= insul_ht nil) 
 (setq insul_ht 90)
)

(setq p1 (getpoint "\n1st point: "))
(setq p9 (getpoint P1 "\nend point : "))
(setq ang1 (angle p1 p9))
(setq p1 (polar p1 ang1 45))    

(setq N (fix (/ (distance p1 p9) (* 90.0 (/ insul_ht 90.0)) )))
(setq d1 (/ insul_ht 2.0))
(setq p2 (polar p1 (+ 1.5708 ang1)  d1))
(command "pLINE" p2 "w" 0.0 0.0 "a")
(setq m 1)
(while (<= m N)
 (setq p3 (polar p2 ang1 d1))
 (setq p5 (polar p3 ang1 insul_ht))
 (setq p6 (polar p5 ang1 d1 ))
; now put pts 3,4,5,6
 (command "ce" p3 "a" "-180" "ce" p5 "a" "180")
; parallel lines now drawn
 (setq m (+ 2 m))
 (setq p2 p6)
) 

(command "")   

[Spiderguy]

Oh, duh!

 

Started command and payed attention to the line, got it - I usually pay attention to those, that's how I lean about certain commands, just never occurred to me to look at the pline command for any "extras".

 

Thanks!

[buildman]

Hello everyone!

 

Anyway, here are the dwg and the pat (saved as txt so that it could be loaded to the forum - just change the txt to pat) files for your review!

 

Thanks,

 

Matt Hamby

 

Hey Matt or anyone;

 

How do I convert the .txt file to a .pat file? This is probably going to be very simple but I'm new and learning Autocad.

 

Thanks very much

 

James

[ReMark]

There is no conversion. Just change the file extension from txt to pat. In Windows Explorer right-click on file name then select the Rename option.

[buildman]

There is no conversion. Just change the file extension from txt to pat. In Windows Explorer right-click on file name then select the Rename option.

 

Tried that and it didn't work, I'll give it another go.

 

Thanks

 

James

Edited September 15, 2011 by buildman

[danellis]

At the risk of wanting to teach you how to suck eggs, have you made sure that your Windows is set to show the extensions of known file types (or rather not to hide them!).

 

dJE

Edited September 15, 2011 by danellis
let's say that in English, shall we?

[ReMark]

How to show or hide file name extensions.

 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Show-or-hide-file-name-extensions